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But why, after all, should it not be such a manifold as long
as it remains one substantial existence, having the multiplicity
not of a compound being but of a unity with a variety of
activities?
Now, no doubt, if these various activities are not themselves
substantial existences- but merely manifestations of latent
potentiality- there is no compound; but, on the other hand, it
remains incomplete until its substantial existence be expressed
in act. If its substantial existence consists in its Act, and
this Act constitutes multiplicity, then its substantial existence
will be strictly proportioned to the extent of the multiplicity.
We allow this to be true for the Intellectual-Principle to which
we have allotted [the multiplicity of] self-knowing; but for the
first principle of all, never. Before the manifold, there must be
The One, that from which the manifold rises: in all numerical
series, the unit is the first.
But- we will be answered- for number, well and good, since the
suite makes a compound; but in the real beings why must there be
a unit from which the multiplicity of entities shall proceed?
Because [failing such a unity] the multiplicity would consist of
disjointed items, each starting at its own distinct place and
moving accidentally to serve to a total.
But, they will tell us, the Activities in question do proceed
from a unity, from the Intellectual-Principle, a simplex.
By that they admit the existence of a simplex prior to the
Activities; and they make the Activities perdurable and class
them as substantial existences [hypostases]; but as Hypostases
they will be distinct from their source, which will remain
simplex; while its product will in its own nature be manifold and
dependent upon it.
Now if these activities arise from some unexplained first
activity in that principle, then it too contains the manifold:
if, on the contrary, they are the very earliest activities and
the source and cause of any multiple product and the means by
which that Principle is able, before any activity occurs, to
remain self-centred, then they are allocated to the product of
which they are the cause; for this principle is one thing, the
activities going forth from it are another, since it is not,
itself, in act. If this be not so, the first act cannot be the
Intellectual-Principle: the One does not provide for the
existence of an Intellectual-Principle which thereupon appears;
that provision would be something [an Hypostasis] intervening
between the One and the Intellectual-Principle, its offspring.
There could, in fact, be no such providing in The One, for it was
never incomplete; and such provision could name nothing that
ought to be provided. It cannot be thought to possess only some
part of its content, and not the whole; nor did anything exist to
which it could turn in desire. Clearly anything that comes into
being after it, arises without shaking to its permanence in its
own habit. It is essential to the existence of any new entity
that the First remain in self-gathered repose throughout:
otherwise, it moved before there was motion and had intellectual
act before any intellection- unless, indeed, that first act [as
motionless and without intelligence] was incomplete, nothing more
than a tendency. And what can we imagine it lights upon to become
the object of such a tendency?
The only reasonable explanation of act flowing from it lies in
the analogy of light from a sun. The entire intellectual order
may be figured as a kind of light with the One in repose at its
summit as its King: but this manifestation is not cast out from
it: we may think, rather, of the One as a light before the light,
an eternal irradiation resting upon the Intellectual Realm; this,
not identical with its source, is yet not severed from it nor of
so remote a nature as to be less than Real-Being; it is no blind
thing, but is seeing and knowing, the primal knower.
The One, as transcending Intellect, transcends knowing: above all
need, it is above the need of the knowing which pertains solely
to the Secondary Nature. Knowing is a unitary thing, but defined:
the first is One, but undefined: a defined One would not be the
One-absolute: the absolute is prior to the definite.
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